FINOM ICO Review and Regrets

This was a very expensive ICO at $2 per token. It supposedly includes a NOM and FIN coin for each purchase. So far there haven’t been many real updates about when we’ll receive these tokens. All I do know at this point is that one of them will be locked for a year. The cost was very high so I certainly hope this wasn’t a scam designed to collect a large amount of coins (as many ICOs are). I hope they will go ahead with their projects and that this coin will return well. Since the price was so high investors now have extremely high expectations over more reasonably priced ICOs. Can the team deliver or do they even care to? Time will tell but if my experience with an overpayment is an indication this team may not be honest or trustworthy as is the case with the majority out there unfortunately.

I’m a user of Nanopool and that’s how I found this ICO but I am already having regrets but let’s get into what FINOM claims to be.

They claim they merged the 3 projects into what is called FINOM with Mining (Nanopool), Cryptonit (their own cryptoexchange) and, Tabtrader (Banking).

I know nothing about the other projects but Nanopool works well. What’s weird and good is that Nanopool seems to be Chinese based since it has an ICP license.

The troubling part is the question is who is really running these projects and company? It’s not clear, they claim to be from Switzerland yet Nanopool is a Chinese website so there is Chinese ownership. When looking at who is behind Finom most of them appear to be extremely young people. The issue for me is why did they register in Switzerland when the entire team seems to have no connection there? Was it to artificially build trust? This is concerning because as far as I can tell they all really appear to be based in China and other parts of the world so why try to hide this?

Why am I upset?

Well first of all I feel silly but frustrated with Ethereum when I was trying to send to this ICO the Ethereum network was “congested” as it often is. When I was trying to send I kept seeing in the console that the transaction was rejected so I kept trying. However I didn’t realize the Ethereum wallet doesn’t show pending transactions and may attempt to send more ETH than your account has if you keep sending small amounts that are pending.

I ended up sending more ETH than I intended to them which are of course worth far more now. I opened a support ticket explaining what had happened only to be ignored after several attempts:

After a month of waiting for support I e-mailed the “hello@finom.io” that they encourage you to use on their website but that didn’t work.

Then I started getting SPAM from the owner who appears to be overseas and thought I’d reply directly to the owner.

Unfortunately like most crypto projects and companies they are always content to collect your coins, they’ll SPAM you and create an impression that they an honest and community driven project but usually it couldn’t be driven further from the truth.

Experiences like these drive investors like me to not only become frustrated but we become less likely to invest in new projects going forward.

It’s hard to tell skeptics concerned about scams and fraud that it doesn’t happen or to justify that “most ICOs and most crypto players are honest” when in terms of IT, support and communication I haven’t seen anything more arrogant or dishonest than experiences like these. It’s a world where our IT projects and clients would not tolerate this treatment and it’s only a matter of time before investors vote with their wallets out of both genuine fear and frustration.

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4 Responses

We’re sorry to hear that our project has left a negative impression on you. We try to reply to every letter we receive and are actively expanding our service. However, we are unable to return your investment to you due to the holding period. The Offering Memorandum, which you confirmed you had read before investing, states that we are unable to carry out any returns within one year due to the requirements of the financial regulator.

According to the document, you purchased FIN security tokens, the digital shares of Finom (which is why the price of FIN is higher than for the utility tokens). Section 1 of the Memorandum states that the Holding Period (the period of asset ownership) is a constituent part of the offering to purchase tokens, specifically: “The Finom Tokens may not be resold or otherwise transferred by Subscribers until after the first anniversary of the issuance of the Finom Tokens.” That is, tokens cannot be returned at this time. But you can divest your tokens in a year, as stated in the document.

We also lament that you were inconvenienced by delays on the Ethereum network. Unfortunately, such instances do not depend on us, and Finom cannot be held accountable for risks involving the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.

Nevertheless, we believe in our project and value every investor. We continue to work, launching new services and updating old ones. Please check for updates on our website and on Twitter, and follow us on our Telegram channel. We will keep doing everything we can to make your investment worthwhile.

Thanks for the reply, albeit months late and only after this was made public. Kirill Suslov told me it is normal not to expect a response to overpayments or refund requests of any sort. I haven’t heard anything back from him about where our money is or why I don’t have tokens. If you mean by “financial regulator”, “Finma” they’ve recently informed me that you are not authorized to carry out any financial activities in Switzerland at all. On that basis alone you should be returning money to anyone who feels deceived by similar statements made on your website and your team. What about our supposed shareholder rights? Can we get a full accounting of all the funds collected? On the other hand since your company isn’t authorized to issue any shares, securities or engage in financial activities it can’t be a one way street to deceive or mistreat people who were unaware of this.

What bothers me as an investor is that I don’t have any tokens and I was ignored until this became public and now I find out that Finom isn’t even legally operating in Switzerland per the very same regulator you claim to follow. As another astute investor Sudhar mentioned, instead of delivering the NOM tokens you just tried to collect even more money by doing another ICO which is upsetting and alarming to us investors.

After digesting 41 million dollars they expect to fool more people by running second round of sale. I too lost $4k worth of Eth to them. Good that it was my first investment in ico. So no more and never to trust thieves like them.

Hello Sudhar very sorry to hear this I believe you are referring to their second ICO where they’ve asked us for more money instead of giving us our NOM tokens. I don’t have either FIN or NOM and they refuse to return my money. Another thing I recently learned is that they are not authorized to operate as a financial company in Switzerland according to “Finma” the financial authority in Switzerland. They are also really based out of Russia and are registering off-shore to countries they have no ties to. They say we have shareholder rights yet they never consulted with us on any of the major decisions.